After Truancy

The way we practiced paradise – scattering seeds in the breeze – opening mystery beyond every word or silence. That was the only real thing I am going to remember about this life.

*

Chickadees return to the pines after summer truancy. I missed them more when I heard their song out of the blue. Out of the green?

Abba Antony recommends: in whatever place you live, do not easily leave. Michigan – Kenya – Suburbia – to what end, Abba? I think Merton would ask us to become a stranger. Root into homelessness.

At the library, I met a woman living with cerebral palsy who was taken in by Mother Theresa at birth, adopted and brought to the United States. She lives in wheel chair and has been experiencing homeless for three years. I felt the paradox of her relinquishment of all security being utterly tied up with what it means to find the way home. She is home in no place and yet, in the heart of our encounter of one another, I suddenly knew home.

This on repeat.

*

Cresting lazy hills on a longer drive. Moving into sunrise seems entirely different than driving into sunset. Yet it is the same sun – same earth – same confluence of light and darkness parading as “my life.” How long has humanity been obsessed with purpose? The practice of living free from care echoes the depth I knew in that short paradise we tasted beyond.

The distance makes a difference only if there is insistence; I made that up a thousand lifetimes ago.